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ANTHRO

ANTHRO 133B:Covering Islam: On What We Learn to See, Think and Hear about Islam & Muslims (AFRICAST 133B, CSRE 133B)

In this course, students will think critically about how knowledge about Islam, Muslims, and Muslim Societies is produced and circulated. As a class, we will consider why and how certain kinds of ideas about Islam and Muslims become representative (i.e., authoritative discourse) while others ideas do not. This is an interdisciplinary class; course material will draw on readings from anthropology, literary criticism, history, sociology and media and cultural studies. We will also be engaging with other kinds of material, including news articles, editorials, documentaries, and films.

Last offered: Autumn 2015

ANTHRO 134:Object Lessons (ANTHRO 234)

Human-object relations in the processes of world making. Objectification and materiality through ethnography, archaeology, material culture studies, and cultural studies. Interpretive connotations around and beyond the object, the unstable terrain of interrelationships between sociality and materiality, and the cultural constitution of objects. Sources include: works by Marx, Hegel, and Mauss; classic Pacific ethnographies of exchange, circulation, alienability, and fetishism; and material culture studies.

Last offered: Winter 2014
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci

ANTHRO 134A:Whose Ghost in the Machine? Cultures, Politics and Morals of Artificial Intelligence

This course seeks to divert attention away from bleak fantasies of an impending AI apocalypse that would be unleashed by ¿the blind and irresponsible advent of oppressively dehumanizing technology¿ and instead highlight the oppressive ¿human¿ elements that structure how AI is imagined, researched, designed, produced and utilized. The aim of the course is to analyze how culture at large influences the development of AI and how, or to what extent, AI reproduces political and moral structures of human societies.nnWhat makes us, and even Silicon Valley tycoons, become afraid of science-fictional fantasies of nonhuman villains to wipe the human race, while we easily shrug off rampant racism or sexism that is reproduced and reinforced by ¿algorithms of oppression¿? What kind of political and cultural elements influence the mostly invisible political economy of how AI, machine learning and deep learning is designed, produced and utilized as a commodity by some of the most powerful corporation
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This course seeks to divert attention away from bleak fantasies of an impending AI apocalypse that would be unleashed by ¿the blind and irresponsible advent of oppressively dehumanizing technology¿ and instead highlight the oppressive ¿human¿ elements that structure how AI is imagined, researched, designed, produced and utilized. The aim of the course is to analyze how culture at large influences the development of AI and how, or to what extent, AI reproduces political and moral structures of human societies.nnWhat makes us, and even Silicon Valley tycoons, become afraid of science-fictional fantasies of nonhuman villains to wipe the human race, while we easily shrug off rampant racism or sexism that is reproduced and reinforced by ¿algorithms of oppression¿? What kind of political and cultural elements influence the mostly invisible political economy of how AI, machine learning and deep learning is designed, produced and utilized as a commodity by some of the most powerful corporations in contemporary global economy? In short, how does human culture at large configure within the scientific and technological research into and development of non-human intelligence?nnAnthropology has a long history of researching about human-technology interaction and often joins forces with History of Science and Science and Technology Studies. In that spirit, we will cover a wide array of literature on the historical development of academic research on cognitive science, philosophy of mind, consciousness, machine learning, deep learning, cybernetics and robotics. However, the primary aim of the course is to offer a meta-perspective on the ¿cultural aspects¿ of how these topics have been studied and practiced by entrepreneurs, research scientists, engineers, philosophers and futurists, and not the disciplinary knowledge generated by research on these topics.nnApart from ethnographic and historic researches about how AI is studied and produced, we will utilize works by theoretical cultural critics, historians and philosophers, like Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Michel Foucault, as well as Gilbert Ryle, Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers. Furthermore, we will heavily rely on cultural images, fantasies and narratives about artificial intelligence in literature, arts and cinema. To that effect, we will watch a wide array of movies and will interactively analyze these cultural works in class, asking to what extent they represent actual research into and development of AI.

2019-2020 Winter

ANTHRO 134B:Conflict and Change in the Middle East

Following the Arab Spring, the hope for political and social change has been widely raised and celebrated in the Middle East. This hope, however, has been shattered alongside the recent cycles of violence and conflict in different parts of the region, from Syria and Iraq to Egypt. This course examines political violence, change, and boundary making in the modern Middle East. By taking a historical and anthropological look at the political conflict and change, this course will explore how particular political, economic, and social narratives, encounters, and contradictions have accompanied the conflict and change in the region. The course will focus on the cases from Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Morocco, and Israel/Palestine.

Last offered: Autumn 2015

ANTHRO 135:Cultural Studies (ANTHRO 235)

Identity, community, and culture; their interactions and formation.

Last offered: Winter 2013
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci

ANTHRO 135A:The Anthropology of Security (ANTHRO 235A)

This seminar begins by outlining the main theoretical and empirical challenges in the areas of surveillance studies and security studies. The seminar provides a space wherein students will be able to discuss these inter-disciplinary areas and develop their own Anthropology-informed perspectives. The seminar then discusses the work of Anthropologists who through their ethnographic and theoretical work have helped developed and important and emergent area: ¿The Anthropology of Security¿. Areas covered include, inter alia, national security, security and war, biometrics, gated-ness, and environmental and bio-security threats.

Waste is increasingly central as an object and medium of political contestation in the contemporary world, from struggles over garbage, labor, and dignity in Senegal; to explosive remnants of war acting as rogue infrastructure in the Korean demilitarized zone. In response, waste has also become a productive concept in the environmental humanities and humanistic social sciences. In this course we will read a selection of foundational texts focused on waste, many of which draw on case studies from different parts of the world. The case of China will be emphasized, however, since China has emerged in the last few decades as a center not only of global industrial production, but also for processing the world¿s waste, contesting pollution, and fighting for environmental justice. By pairing key theoretical texts with texts dealing with waste-related issues in China and elsewhere, we will ultimately ask how contemporary global waste politics disrupts western understandings of waste, recycling, value, and more.

Last offered: Winter 2019

ANTHRO 135C:Moving Worlds: Anthropology of Mobility and Travel

This course looks at human mobility from an anthropological perspective. We will read texts that ethnographically explore the experiences of refugees, labor migrants, tourists and seafarers, among others. In particular, we will look at the intersection of physical mobility and social mobility, as people often move in order to improve their life, to increase safety or economic security, or to gain social capital. However, the mobility perspective has also been criticized for depoliticizing and celebrating movement without critical attention to its socio-political and economic context. While mobility as a term points to the ability to move, human migration is at least as often characterized by restrictions and obstacles to movement, such as borders. We will think critically about the deep inequalities that exist in terms of why and how people move, and who are able to mobilize resources to move.

Last offered: Autumn 2017

ANTHRO 135H:Conversations in CSRE: Case Studies in the Stanford Community (CSRE 135H)

Race, ethnicity, gender, and religion using the tools, analytical skills and concepts developed by anthropologists.